


Rats in the Belly

by icarus_chained



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Courage, Episode Related, Families of Choice, Fear, Forgiveness, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Magical Artifacts, Temporary Character Death, Temptation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7543663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set around the end of Ep.52. Grog and Percy, in the aftermath of the battle with Kevdak, with the shadows of Orthax and Craven Edge, and questions of fear and guilt and temptation and forgiveness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rats in the Belly

**Author's Note:**

> I still haven't caught up, and I may be missing chunks of things, so apologies for mistakes. Also, Grog is amazing.

Percy'd started flinching when he looked at him. Not proper flinching, not like fear. Nah. Grog knew this one. This was guilt. Pretty familiar these days. It was Percy's favourite emotion when it came to family. Said a lot about the man, maybe.

Grog wasn't sure what to do about it. He didn't ... It'd taken him a while to figure out what it was about. He'd been a bit out of it when, you know, when Craven Edge had gotten him. They'd had to explain to him what had happened, at least at first. When they made the weapon go away, something had snapped, something had pulled loose, and he'd been able to understand some things that had ... felt far away before. He still hadn't had all the information, though. He hadn't quite figured out why everyone was mad at Percy until later. Pike had helped him with that. She'd been a bit mad herself. Not a lot, because she loved Percy and it had turned out okay, but some.

The sword had eaten Grog's soul. That was still a strange thought. Didn't quite feel real, you know? Just ... nom, and bye bye. Just out of nowhere. He'd carried that thing for months. He'd talked with it, fed it. He'd thought they'd had a bond. And then, well. He guessed in the end they hadn't.

And Percy ... Percy had known. Or suspected. He'd known there was something wrong with the sword, and he'd given it to Grog. That was why everyone was mad.

He ought to be too. Grog knew that. Man up and gives you a booby-trapped sword, you got a right to be mad at him. Grog wasn't really sure why he wasn't. Well, he _knew_ , he just didn't _know_. Not in words. Not any way you could tell somebody. He'd wanted to explain it to Pike, wanted to pull it out like a string of bones out of a maw and have her lay out it all proper the way she did, but he hadn't got around to it yet. There'd been Kevdak. There'd been things to do. He hadn't ... hadn't had time yet.

He just knew he wasn't really mad. Because of ... because of things. Memories, things that matched up now that hadn't before. Bits and pieces of Percy that he understood, 'cause now he had them too.

The sword and the gun. The thing in your head that no one else could hear. The ... the power of it, the red-tinged strength. The need. The bit of you that didn't want to let go at the end. The throbbing under your skin, the need to just have it that little bit longer. The fear, when you knew what it was, and you wanted it anyway. 

The fear that made you want it in the first place. The feeling of being small and weak in the face of something that had hurt you once, hurt you so bad that nothing else could scare you the same way. The way they knew, the sword and the gun. The way they promised to protect you, to make you strong enough to face it. The _need_ for that. The need to have that strength. The knowledge of how weak you were without it.

And the guilt. After. When you knew what it had done. Grog knew what Percy'd felt when he'd seen his sister's name on his gun. He'd felt it too, when he'd pulled himself through a portal and found his sword, his anchor, his strength, _embedded through Pike_. When he'd seen ... when he'd seen what it had done to her, what it had _wanted_ to do to her, and some part of him had wanted it anyway. The thought gnawed his gut like somebody'd loosed a bunch rats in there, twisted it up every time he thought about it. Yeah. Grog knew about guilt. Every time Percy looked at him, that little flinch, Grog knew exactly what was sitting in the other man's belly. He knew exactly what it felt like.

So he didn't ... It was just hard to be mad at the man. 'Cause he knew ... Percy was just _small_ , right? The man was so small, and so scared, and he had so many rats in his belly. Grog could see them. Like, not really, but you know. The man was twisted up worse than Grog's first attempt at braiding Pike's hair, knotted up through and through, all gnawed at inside and out. It was just ... it was hard to watch him. It was _painful_. 'Cause it was ...

Grog tried to imagine hurting Pike again. He couldn't. He _couldn't_. It was just ... wrong. It was wrong, all the way wrong. And Percy couldn't seem to help it. 'Cause he got scared, and he did the wrong thing, and people kept ...

He didn't want it either. If he'd done it on purpose, it'd be a different thing, but the man didn't _want_ to hurt them. He loved them. Family, all of them, and you didn't hurt your family. All the rats in his belly. Nah. Percy didn't want to hurt them. He was just too twisted up in his head to help it. Things like the gun, like the sword, they kept finding him. The skull. And no matter what he did about it, it always went wrong. 

And he wanted 'em anyway. The guns and the swords and the skulls. Some bit of him. 'Cause Percy was small, and he was weak, and he was scared of being hurt again. 'Cause they promised him power to prevent that. Because some bit of him couldn't help but _want_ it. And there was a bit of Grog, after the skull, after Craven Edge, after Kevdak, there was a bit of him that understood that all too well.

He tried to ... to hold the thoughts in his head. To hold them up and just ... think them for a bit. He looked at the man, white-haired and flinching with his guns at his side, and he thought: "The thing you gave me ate my soul." He thought: "You wanted it and you were afraid of it, and you gave it to me." And he should get mad, he really should, but then he thought: "You didn't think it would hurt me." And he wondered: "Because I'm stronger than you? Because I'm stupider? Why did you think I could hold it better than you?"

And then, sometimes, Percy looked back at him, with that flinch of his, that gnawing thing from having put another sword through another Pike all over again, and Grog thought, with a voice in his head that sounded just like Pike: "You didn't want to hurt me. It's okay. You didn't mean it."

'Cause in the end, you know, that was all it boiled down to. The other things, the more complicated things, Grog could feel the edges of them, knew they should have made him angry, but they didn't, because in the end it was just that simple. Percy hadn't given him the sword to hurt him. He hadn't wanted it to eat Grog's soul. He'd just wanted the strength of it, wanted it to make at least one of them stronger. He'd been afraid of it, afraid he'd give in to it like he'd given in to his gun, and he'd given it to Grog, but he hadn't thought it would hurt Grog the same way. There was a bit of Grog that couldn't help but preen at that, because it meant that Percy'd thought Grog was stronger than him. Must have done. He'd thought that Grog wouldn't give in.

And, okay, he'd been _wrong_ , but that was because Percy hadn't known about Kevdak. He hadn't known ... just how weak Grog was too. He hadn't known about the fear, the one that had always been there, the one Grog tried to mask behind rage and pride and excitement. The one that, despite it all, never really went away. Grog had always been the weakling of the herd. He'd always been the small one, the scared one. Until Pike, anyway. Until he'd found a new family, one that would back him always, no matter how weak he was.

He hadn't properly realised that until Kevdak. He'd still been scared underneath it all. That was how Craven Edge had gotten to him. But here, now ... He hadn't needed a great sword to stand up to his oldest fear. All he'd needed was his family. Kevdak was dead, and it hadn't been Craven Edge that killed him. It had been _Vox Machina_. The family Grog had chosen, the family that had never yet let him down.

It was okay to be weak, when you had that. It was okay to be scared. Family wouldn't hurt you for it. Family would keep you safe instead, or they'd die trying.

And when he looked at Percy, that was what he thought. He thought: "You're small, and you're scared, and you hurt me. You didn't want to, but you did." He thought: "That's all right. We'll just make you stronger for next time, make it so next time you won't be scared. And then everything will be all right." He thought: "Don't worry. We're Vox Machina. You couldn't kill us if you tried." He thought: "Sometimes I want to pick you up and pull all the rats out of your belly." He thought: "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you. Much, anyway. We're family. I'm going to keep you safe."

He thought that, he looked at Percy and he thought that, and then he remembered _Pike_. He remembered her with his sword in her belly. He remembered the rats eating him up from the inside. He remembered the way she smiled at him, tried to smile at him, the way she just ... made it go away. Forgave him, because he hadn't meant to hurt her. Wiped it away, instantly and just like that. Because love. Because _family_.

He looked at Percy and he thought: "This time, about this, I'm gonna be your Pike." And somehow that thought, that memory and that sense and that _feeling_ , made him feel stronger than all the evil swords in Tal'Dorei.


End file.
